If you’ve been paying attention at all, you know that my all time favorite comic book character is Spider-Man. But after that, my second favorite is Wolverine. Now, some of you are probably saying “Wolverine? Everybody likes Wolverine. Why don’t you pick something more original?” to which I would reply “Shut your stupid face.” I don’t buy many physical comics these days; but Wolverine, amidst all of its various launches & relaunches is one of the two series that I’ll look for on the rare occasions I get the urge to search through the back issue bins, the other being The Amazing Spider-Man.

As I explained with the launch of my weekly Spider-Man column, I’m more than three years behind current Marvel continuity. However, just like Spidey, I’ve decided to just jump back into Wolverine books and ride it out from there. This will come out every Wednesday and cover the Wolverine related books that came out the previous week.

When I last left Wolverine, he was still alive. Well, he’s alive again, but we’ll get to that eventually. Let’s get started!

All-New Wolverine #30 was written by Tom Taylor with art by Juann Cabal & Nolan Woodward.

I know that Laura Kinney, best known as X-23, is currently going by Wolverine since the OG Wolverine bit the big one a couple years ago, but for the sake of cutting down on confusion I’m going to establish that when I say “Wolverine” I’m talking about the original. I could refer to him as Logan, but Old Man Logan is also a supporting character in this book. I suppose I could call Wolverine James…but naw.

So X-23 is Wolverine’s “daughter” by way of cloning. Daken is Wolverine’s son by way of good old fashioned ugly bumpin’. This book also features Old Man Logan (a Wolverine from an alternate reality/dystopian future), a reformed Sabretooth, Honey Badger (another Wolverine clone “daughter”) and Lady Deathstrike. They’ve come together to try to take down a group calling themselves The Orphans of X, people who’ve lost loved ones thanks to the assassins created by the Weapon X program and are looking to kill anyone involved with it. That spells trouble for just about everybody in this book.

When last I was familiar with the Wolverine books, Daken & Sabretooth were dead and there was only one clone “daughter” of Wolverine. Since then, Daken was brought back to life as a horseman of Apocalypse and it turns out that the Sabretooth that died was actually just a clone. And X-23 actually had ten clones of her made, nine of which are now dead. The only survivor is Gabrielle Kinney, better known as Honey Badger. Despite my initial reaction to the character, Honey Badger is kind of awesome.

The team decides that rather than try to fight the Orphans of X they should join forces with them because, after all, their lives were also ruined by the Weapon X Project. While the leader of the group (who was from a family that X-23 had been assigned to wipe out & she did all but him) doesn’t love the idea, they put it to a vote.

Daken seems like a pretty good dude in this book. I don’t know how that fits in with him ham-fistedly turning comic book tropes on their ear over in Iceman, but it works out here. He so spectacularly failed his father the first time around that he wants to do better this time, even taking care of his “sisters”. And, I gotta say, the art in this book is fantastic.

Old Man Logan #34 was written by Ed Brisson with art by Ibraim Roberson and Carlos Lopez.

Old Man Logan found himself in this reality after Secret Wars ended, He’s kinda Wolverine, but not really Wolverine. He has all of Wolverine’s memories up to a point, but he doesn’t remember dying so that makes him a different character from Wolverine proper.

In this issue Wolverine goes to Mardipoor to slice up some ninjas, which is kind of Wolverine 101. Wolverine’s dead ex-lover Mariko Yashida has been resurrected by the Hand as the Scarlet Samurai, a play on her half brother Shin Harada the Silver Samurai. It seemed as though Mariko had killed Shin, but he got better. Soon after that, Shin & Logan managed to free Mariko from the Hand’s programming, so now she’s back too.

Logan & Mariko are hunting down the Gorgon, the leader of the Hand who’s trying to gain control of the market for a new drug called Regenix, which can heal any wound, but is highly addictive. The two groups converge on a supplier who has the only known source of the drug. Logan tells Gorgon that he can avoid senseless slaughter if he just surrenders, but that does about as well as you’d expect.

Logan & Mariko manage to overcome the Hand’s forces, but Logan (who’s healing factor ain’t what she used to be) is badly injured.

Hmmm…if only there was some sort of substance around that was capable of healing any wound? Check back in two weeks, when Old Man Logan #35 comes out!